An Interview with Chalmers Johnson (Part Two) Whatever Happened to Congres

Part two of the Chalmers Johnson interview http://www.counterpunch.org/engelhardt03232006.html

TE: Any last words?

Johnson: I'm still working on them. My first effort was Blowback, The Costs and Consequences of American Empire. That was well before I anticipated anything like massive terrorist attacks in the United States. It was a statement that the foreign-policy problems--I still just saw them as that--of the first part of the 21st century were going to be left over from the previous century, from our rapacious activities in Latin America, from our failure to truly learn the lessons of Vietnam. The Sorrows of Empire, Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic was an attempt to come to grips with our militarism. Now, I'm considering how we've managed to alienate so many rich, smart allies--every one of them, in fact. How we've come to be so truly hated. This, in a Talleyrand sense, is the sort of mistake from which you can't recover. That's why I'm planning on calling the third volume of what I now think of as "The Blowback Trilogy," Nemesis. Nemesis was the Greek goddess of vengeance. She also went after people who became too arrogant, who were so taken with themselves that they lost all prudence. She was always portrayed as a fierce figure with a scale in one hand--think, Judgment Day--and a whip in the other

TE: And you believe she's coming after us?

Johnson: Oh, I believe she's arrived. I think she's sitting around waiting for her moment, the one we're coming up on right now.